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Thugs with Dirty Mugs
Thugs with Dirty Mugs is a 1939 Merrie Melodies short directed by Fred Avery. Title The title is a play on Warner Bros.' 1938 feature film, Angels with Dirty Faces. Plot Gangster Killer Diller goes on a bank-robbing spree and the police attempt to apprehend him. Availability * (1991) LaserDisc - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 1, Side 3: Tex Avery * (1992) VHS - The Golden Age of Looney Tunes Volume 3: Tex Avery * (2005) DVD - The Roaring Twenties (1995 Turner dubbed version) * (2005) DVD - Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3, Disc Two Censorship * The WB airing of this cartoon cut the part where one of the robbers hits a bank teller (who taunts them with "I'm going to tell-ell!") in the back of the head during one of their heists. Also cut was the police chief yelling "Take that, you rat!" and then feeding cheese to an actual rodent.http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-t.aspx :* According to Canadian animation historian Gene Walz, this short was banned from being released in Winnipeg, Manitoba back in the 1930s for glorifying criminal behavior and showing Killer Diller being punished like a schoolkid (by being shown in prison writing "I've been a naughty boy" several times on a blackboard with a prison-striped dunce cap on his head) rather than an adult, which the censors thought wasn't "sincere." It should be noted that the Hays Code in America had a similar rule about not glorifying criminals or criminal activity in movies, but animated shorts such as this one were exempt from this rule.http://www.intanibase.com/gac/looneytunes/censored-t.aspx Notes * The lead character is a caricature of Edward G. Robinson. * Similar to Tex Avery's later MGM crime/detective-oriented cartoon, Who Killed Who?, the ostensible plot is secondary to a fast and furious series of gags. * The blackboard writing punishment Killer Diller receives at the end of the cartoon would later be popularized by The Simpsons as a running gag during its opening sequence. * This short marks the first color Warner Bros. cartoon to open with "WARNER BROS." and "Present" in a banner on the original opening titles. But since the original credits were cut for Blue Ribbon reissues, the original opening rings have not been seen since 1944. * This short was re-released in 1944, cutting out the specific production credits. However, on eBay in 2007, there were about 40 Tex Avery title cards for sale, many long believed lost due to these reissues, and one of them was from "Thugs with Dirty Mugs". The finding of the original titles came a little too late, as the short had already been restored and had its audio remastered for DVD release in 2005. The version containing " " on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 3 is the Blue Ribbon version, the first Blue Ribbon to credit Schlesinger to be present on a restored DVD.http://cartoonresearch.com/warner.html * According to the episode of Toonheads, "Gangster Toons", this cartoon marked the ultimate in gangster film parodies. Gallery Thugs with Dirty Mugs title card.png|Faded version of the Blue Ribbon Re-Issue Titles File:Thugs.PNG|screenshot File:40filmclips.jpg|Original titles for "Thugs with Dirty Mugs" along with various other Tex Avery WB cartoons References External Links * Category:Merrie Melodies Shorts Category:Cartoons directed by Tex Avery Category:1939 Category:Shorts Category:Blue Ribbon reissues Category:Cartoons written by Jack Miller Category:Cartoons animated by Sid Sutherland Category:Cartoons with music by Carl W. Stalling Category:Cartoons with orchestrations by Milt Franklyn Category:Cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger Category:Cartoons with film editing by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with sound effects edited by Treg Brown Category:Cartoons with characters voiced by Mel Blanc Category:Caricatures of real people Category:Cartoons in a.a.p. package Category:One-Shot Cartoons Category:Re-released cartoons whose original titles are known to exist